Speaker 1: What's going on? Everyone?
Speaker 2: I'm Will Button and this is Adventures in DevOps. Today
I've got the co host with the most with me,
Jonathan Hall.
Speaker 3: Hey, everybody, how's it going?
Speaker 2: And today we have our very special guests Danielle Fontani.
How are you man, I'm fine, I'm fine.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having.
Speaker 3: Met an adventure and DevOps, this effort and getting this
this recorded. It has truly been an adventure.
Speaker 4: Sure, Sure, we are talking about adventure and.
Speaker 3: Is the.
Speaker 2: So we've actually got an article from you about I
gonna gonna pull up the title because the title just
cracks me up. Tri Sarah tops why DevOps is not
only an acronym and this is a great article to read.
We'll put a link to it in the show notes.
But it's that the unique combination of being humorous and informative.
And so we're going to dig into that and talk
about acronyms and develops. But first, for any of our
listeners who may not be familiar with this, you want
to give us a little bit about your background.
Speaker 4: Sure, I work as a CEO in seeing traditional business
at a digital company and we try to help companies
for accelerating their digital transformation of cours and in this company,
I love to devise about the VopS of COURTSA. In
the spare time, I love to play with open source
project and contribute to the community. And I love also
to write article for sharing my opinion and be in
touch with the community itself. So that's why also I'm
here and I love to be here with you.
Speaker 2: So tell us how did you get to How did
you even get to the point where you were writing
an article called tri sterotops? Why the VopS is not
only an acronym?
Speaker 4: Oh sure, sure, the story is quite it's quite funny.
It's quite funny because it comes from a previous article.
My previous article that was that has a little bit provocative,
provocative title the VopS is.
Speaker 1: Dead Long life to pops.
Speaker 4: Where where in that article I write about why we
should focus more on the app development and try to
find some way to automate the application development instead of
wasting a lot of time on the infrastructure. And then
already one user reply to the comment and tell me
what would be the next the next one acronymus in
the bobs would be patched out of So this make
me loved so much, And I told myself I will
have to write an article about that.
Speaker 1: So that's how, and I think.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to use this, I have to say.
I mean, I have these conversations all the time where
someone's like, what do you think about DevOps, sep secups,
blah blah blah blah, and I'm going to just start
throwing pops in there.
Speaker 4: Sure, But now that we have learned that, the algorithm
is quite simple because you can take the OPS word
and put something on in front in front of that,
so you can be everything ups of course, but at
the end it's always the bobs because there are many
way many improvement of the same things. When we talk
about guitops, we don't it's not something different than hobs
on the scopes, and so I think that at the end,
what you are doing is the VopS of course, but
there are many ways to do that. There are many
driver One one important driver is about automation and reduce
the human effort on on the operation side, and how
you can do that. You can do that by implementing hobs.
You can do but at the end, what is no
hobs not, of course, it is use using the cloud
and implementing automation or using tool that do that do
that for you. So at the end, probably there is
only one the VOBS topic. I don't know what you
think about that, but I don't see too many difference
between two approach. What I see is a way for
putting something inside our actual the VopS process, like the
think about the set cops. You know this is another badsword.
Everybody will do that, But what is the se cops
in the end is really different than the VopS or
it's really different implement a process.
Speaker 1: Rather than the regular the best process.
Speaker 4: I don't think so, because you just have to add
another add other people into the process, add or other
competencies into the process.
Speaker 1: If you are able to have auto meet automated.
Speaker 4: Tests on application, maybe you can also automate security tests.
Speaker 1: So form a.
Speaker 4: Point of view, all that are buds work And we
have to hear that bads word because I think it's
important to to have to listen to the new new
trends and follow the new trends and take what is
good in that. But then we have to put into
into our reality. We have to put in practice what
theories tells and and the thing that this is the
probably this is the the most important thing to remember
when we see some acronymous or badsword in in some Twitter.
Speaker 1: Or LinkedIn post.
Speaker 4: And if you if you read some title like the
VopS is dead long life to hypops, of course, don't
trust this this article is. Don't trust that outdoor because
probably they are trying to to tell you something not
not too terrible. Probably it's just something that you can
add to your to your experience, but it's not something revolutionary.
What else I believe? I really believe in the no
hops trend. Just we talking that you don't believe the acronymus,
but I really love the driver of putting less effort
as possible on the operation part.
Speaker 1: And this of course for.
Speaker 4: Me, it doesn't mean forget about that part or take
some risks. Of course, you have to use an infrastructure
that works, that is performat. But what you should do
is to use as much as possible tools and platforms
that make possible that you have to focus only on
the software part. Because more time you spend on the
software part, more value you put in your product, and
more value has your product and more customers will will
buy it. So we have to focus on what brings
value to us.
Speaker 1: This can be done. This, This is possible.
Speaker 4: This is possible because we have a lot of tool
in the market for automating releases an example, for automating
testing example. We have a lot of tools that automatically
bid your application and deploy to an infrastructure that is
fully managed. Maybe, of course, and we can use hyperscaler services.
But I think this is a very very good driver,
a very very good driver because every minute you spend
our mounting our drive on a server or connecting with
cable through devices, it's time that you've asked because the
cloud do it do that for you? And cloud services
are areable, are performance and are good. And when I
talk about this transformation, a lot of seas are mean,
are scared because they think.
Speaker 1: What will happen to me? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Sure, a lot of people are carried by as carried
by the kind of article I write, because they ask
what will be my future? The future will be different.
I think that everybody has to change. If we think
about informatic chance and programming ten years ago is very
different and in the next tenty years will be more different.
So we are evolving. The vobs is spreading and forces.
I mean, guys, they have to start at asformation. Transformation
could be become DevOps, but there are a lot of
other things that we have to do.
Speaker 1: Even if you have even if.
Speaker 4: You are approaching and no OP scenario, we will still
have to monitor the application. We will still have to
take care about security, we will still have to take
care about invoices, and we are it's easy to start
a cloud service. We just have to put credit card
number into the system and you are set.
Speaker 1: But what is there.
Speaker 4: The problem is that every month, every month, you will
have an invoice and you have to pay attention about
what you are paying, what you are taking for. And
this is a this is a new job, a new job.
Of course, big companies spend thousands, not thousands, but hundreds
of thousands of dollars monthly in clouds. So if you say,
if you are to if you are able to save
the teen percent of unused the resources, or you do improvement,
this is a good value and maybe you will stop
to plug cable and you will start to take care
about financial and financial aspect. Another Bads'm sorry for that. Also,
pops is another trend that that that is that will
be important more and more. We will use the cloud
more and more we will get invoices from the cloud,
from the cloud, and more and more we want to
be sure to spend for what we use. So there
are a lot of new professions that that are that
are growing near the develops, near the clouds. So I
won't be scared. I don't want to be scared about
the end of the OM premise because we have always
feared to to talk about that. But but the compromises
is low in dying. I don't know for how many
years we will still have compromise data center, for how
many heres we will still have to plug cable on?
Speaker 1: How are that center?
Speaker 4: So for most of us, the time of the retirement
is very long, so we have to we have to
think about what we have to do until that. So
if Areas is I mean, guys, I won't be scared
about the vopes, I won't be scared about no hopes.
I will take this as an opportunity of being able
to change my my work, change my professional and do
something that brings more value for the for the company
and for myself. But probably I see that I'm probably
I don't want to be too rude, but I but
I think this is the reality.
Speaker 2: Probably yeah, no, I agree with you a hundred percent.
Like there's no oh scenario in technology where you can
get a job and do that same job for the
next thirty or forty years until you retire. Like there's
just that just doesn't exist. And if that's important to
you in your career, technology is probably the wrong career
path for you.
Speaker 3: Become a waiter, right, people always want to eat?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Sure, And by the way, I was a waiter and
I loved it. It's fun work. I'm not missing the job.
Speaker 2: I've actually never done that.
Speaker 3: You are missing out. We just need waiter ops now, foodofs.
And I agree, I mean the truth this. I mean
I actually had somebody asking the other day, aren't you
concerned about shift left because doesn't that just mean automating
more things? And my response was not, really, I'm not.
I mean, yes, that's maybe what it means, or part
of what it means, but somebody has to write and
maintain that automation. And you know, until we invent general AI,
which may or may never happen, there's always going to
be people who are maintaining automation. And that's what I mean,
that's kind of what develops has become right, so that
this practice is not going anywhere anytime soon. It will
change in every way, but it's it's not we're not
getting We're not going to be replacing people with with automations.
Speaker 4: Sure, but if you think not only technology, not relate
into the technology, but if you think what happened on
the industrial revolution, it's the same. Nobody nowadays can think
about going producing a car without using machines, and the
same is in the in the in programming and in.
Speaker 1: The vobs and so on.
Speaker 4: If we can avoid the human effort of courts, there
is no vision.
Speaker 1: There is no vision.
Speaker 4: To still spend many days instead of money.
Speaker 1: There is no reasion.
Speaker 2: I think one of the other things that you touched
on it's really resonates with me, is the whole business
of monitoring cloud expenses, and I think a lot of
people underestimate how big of a value that is. You know,
one just to be able to help identify where those
expenses are and control those costs. But for a lot
of us it may be the first time in your
career when you can actually quantify the value that you
bring to a company. You know, a lot of times
if you're a sisadmin, or an IT administrator or a
network engineer that's like a fixed cost. You know, you
can go to any number of websites and see what
your salary is going to be within a certain range.
But when you get into like managing cloud based expenses,
your value, you're like, the value you provide to be
able to cut someone's cloud bill by ten percent is
going to be different from someone who's spending in ten
thousand dollars a month on the cloud versus some one
who's spending two hundred thousand dollars a month on the cloud,
And so ten percent gives you a way to quantify
the work that you're doing. And whenever you can do that,
it gives you the ability to negotiate what you want
as a salary, which is something that you unique to
people from SIS admin, it even programming backgrounds.
Speaker 4: Sure of course, uh it is one of the new
professions that that will be very important. And of course,
as you're told, the more high is the expense of
the company, and more you are useful in that in
that role and for us as adminting guys, the question
is where I can bring more value plugging a cable
or spending five minium to control the cost. Probably the
answer is the second one, and probably you will need
not only technical competencies but also financial and other kinds
of competency. So this requires this teach us. Another thing
that another turn that's happening is that involves developers and
the bobs guys, and that teach us to learn not
only are skill and not early technical and technical competencies,
but also work on the soft skill because also being
able to read the balance or number is important for
his administrating a cloud, a cloud services. And moreover, think
about the scenario when you have more than one cloud
provider because a lot of companies now are implementing multi
cloud strategy because they fear they're low key and they
don't want to stay on only one IPS scaler because
it could it could fail and what is there is
some issues, so they stay multi cloud. That multi cloud
is harder to maintain because you have service is spread
along multiple vendors with different pressing models, with different invoices,
and this is very hard to manage and it is
very easy to forget about united resources left active some
servers an example that you are not using this need
attention and more need attention. The fact that in this
complex scenario. In this complex scenario, there are also security
security problems that we have to monitor. So cloud is
a very good opportunity for people.
Speaker 1: That are more related with harder.
Speaker 4: To grow and to start a new career probably and
bring more value to companies and bring more valid to
itself because for what I see on job advices, the
boss professional very very well paid in the world, and
more and more paid. So this is another thing that
we have to take in account at the end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very good.
Speaker 2: I think it's really interesting. I hadn't really thought about
this until now, But I deal a lot with people
who are starting their develops careers, and a lot of
the focuses on the technical skills. But from your perspective,
like there's a huge or it feels like a huge
unserved market of these other skills, you know, the financial
skills and the communication skills, and like the business skills
to be able to translate business requirements into develops or
infrastructure requirements and then quantify that.
Speaker 4: You're right, I probably I have not a clear handswer
is hard to quantify this amount of competencies. But even
in the in the programming world, the developer need to
be more and more and more able to communicate with teammates.
And also, I don't know if you remember maybe ten
years ago when we have UH software developer and then architects.
With the cloud, each developer have to be more architect
and less developer because you if you know which piece
take from the cloud and put together, you will save
a lot of time. So competencies are really changing and
having good soft skill helps a lot on the Bobs career.
Probably the most important, the most important soft skill I
can image the communication one, because you often are in
the middle between software and infrastructure and you have to
understand what is happening. Often it's hard to find the
true between between software and infrastructure and software doesn't work.
Speaker 1: So we have to be good.
Speaker 4: Communicat and don't be scared about the issue because because
when issues up and in production, you still have to
find solution very quickly. And also problem solving is a
very good competency that you have that you need. The
things that scare me about soft skill that it's very
hard to develop the soft skill, so that are not
courses that you can buy on Eudemy or on some
other training platform for being able to communicate on something
like that. So this is a good question.
Speaker 1: This is a good question. Probably I don't have a
good answer for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point. I agree one hundred percent.
Maybe that can be our next pops acronym. As we
create a we create a generator framework for communications. It
just automatically generates the right buzzword for you to say
at the right time.
Speaker 3: And did you ever speak pig latin?
Speaker 1: Will?
Speaker 3: I think we might be onto something here. We could
do something like that just at the end of every work.
Speaker 2: In your sentence, this is what happens when Chuck leaves
us alone to do the podcast.
Speaker 3: This is how I convince him never to leave us
alone again.
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that well.
Speaker 3: I liked your article. I like the point it's I mean,
it's basically a joke, now, isn't it that you can
just add ops to everything. I mean, we were making
the literal joke about it, but back in the industry
it's a joke. You can just call anything ops baseball ops,
and football ops, and and people ops and whatever. It's
it's almost lost its meaning. But you really make a
good point. You know that the principles are essentially the same.
The idea of making things simpler through through the use
of automation and tearing down silos. And that's that's valuable.
Whatever you want to call it, whether we call it
dev sec ops or DevOps or whatever, it's a it's
a great goal and has proven very valuable.
Speaker 2: Sure agreed.
Speaker 3: So when you talked about this article, was was inspired
by a convent on your previous article which is about apples?
Was that was that intended as a as a sort
of tongue in cheek or sarcasm or a joke or
was that what was your what was your point about apples?
Speaker 1: Sure? Sure?
Speaker 4: Is why I told never trust who who is writing
the article like the bobbies that long life to because
this is a little click bait title, of course, of course,
but we we have also to find a way enough
for being read, so we had to put such kind
of titles to be read. But the content of the
article talks about still talks about the the principle of
finding a way for putting your attention on apps instead
of infrastructure. And this this is important to remember, especially
when you adopt some tool like Kubernetes, an example that
is a very very good tool and can be used
a cloud and simplify your life, but need a strong governance.
And in this article, I find a way for finding tools,
for finding tools that could be able to simplify to
simplify the Kubernet's governance and let you focus just on
the source code development and doing that. What happened happened
that you write the code and you describe how the
application should be deployed, and everything is done by itself,
So don't worry about pods, services scaling, repass scaling and so.
So this is a good way for starting approaching kuberneties
and the deployment itself in.
Speaker 1: A different way.
Speaker 4: So just take us with code and describe how the
application should be deployed. Don't worry about what will happen
because you can support. There will be a tool that
will take this information and we'll translay this information into
an infrastructure for your application.
Speaker 2: You brought up a really good point earlier, and I
want to highlight it because I think there's a lot
of hidden value in it. You mentioned, specifically in regards
to app ops, that that puts the value on the
things that your customers are paying you for. Right because
and I've heard this stated multiple ways in the past,
but basically, like, no customer is ever buying your product
because of because of how you build your docer files. Right,
They're paying you for the service that you're providing, and
I think that's really important. You know, it's not to
say that like creating good, efficient, secure docer files is
not important, because it is, but it's important to keep
it in perspective in like what's its role in the
business of generating money for this company?
Speaker 4: Sure, and this this is hard to say because we
as technician, we love to let the customer how we
are doing things, and we put a lot of effort
for keep possible that the product works for writing code,
I mean creating good infrastucted. But the customer basically don't
mind about that. So this is not important that the
software is safe because he knows the software is safe.
It's a requirement, so we cannot. It's not surprised if
you tell that you are doing the best you are
using the best tool have it. It's supposed to you
to use. So it's important to keep up to be
attention to where the money comes from. And when I
tell product, I'm not referring only to startups or says product,
but every company. Every company has a core business and
in this core business there is inside some part of
the ETO. Nowadays, we cannot start run a company without
some its some software development and this is part of
the product.
Speaker 1: But you have to pay attention.
Speaker 4: You have to be able to move your attention, your
mess days and your mind to the software development, to
the application development, to the future. And if you can
find a way for using tool or solution that work
by itself and you can buy so you cannot forget
about infrastructure, you cannot forget about the VopS and so on.
But you have to find the way for buy things
that works without human effort.
Speaker 1: This is my opinion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, Well said you're here, all right, what
else should we talk about? Sounds like we have consensus.
Speaker 1: Then it was a great event to solve the world.
Speaker 2: We just need the right acronym to sell it.
Speaker 4: Sure, Sure, when you will discover a new acronym, just
let me know. I will write a new article on
that deal.
Speaker 1: It must be the first one of writing.
Speaker 2: Gotta get that first round, se o clickbait.
Speaker 1: Sure, sure is his chancellor.
Speaker 2: All right, so we're ready to wrap this episode up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess we read some pics, don't we we do?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, Danielle. At the end of each episode we
do we do a pic. It can be something technical
related or not technical related, just something to has peeked
our interest, and then we use that as our pick.
So we'll throw out our picks. Then if there's something
something for you that you would like to share with
the listeners, we'll give you a chance to do that. Okay,
all right, Jonathan, you want to kick us off?
Speaker 3: Sure, I wasn't prepared. Actually, even though I reminded you,
I wasn't prepared. But I guess I'll get with a pick.
So I actually used to work for the company that
makes the product with a pick. But my wife and
I just bought our second Bugaboo stroller. Bugaboo makes really
nice strollers, so we have one we had since my
son was born almost a year ago, but we wanted
a new one that's more compact because we just went
on a long road trip and it was a little
bit of a pain to put it in and out.
Speaker 1: Of the trunk.
Speaker 3: So Bugaboo has a new stroller called the Ant, which
actually collapses into a size that we'll fit an overhead
compartment on an airplane. So wow, we just got the
stroller earlier this week, put it together and we haven't
actually flown with it yet, but it looks nice. It's
a sturdy stroller, it's nice quality staff. They are a
little bit on the expensive side, but they are high
quality and they have a high resell value. So after
your kids outgrow your your Buggaboo, you can resell it
and get and recoup a big portion of your investment.
So that's my pick for this week. Bugaboo.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and some of those are absolutely huge. They're like
monster truck sized strollers.
Speaker 1: They have.
Speaker 3: They have a twin one that actually fits two kids
next to it, So if you have twins or you
have two children that are that are both stroller aids,
they don't have to be the same same age, but
you could have an infant with a two year old,
for example, you can put them side by side. So yeah,
they have quite a range of different options. Nice.
Speaker 2: All right, So my pick for the week is going
to be a non technical pick. It's a new book
I picked up. Courage is calling Fortune Favors The Brave
from Ryan Holiday and it's just getting started into it,
but it's it's really cool. I've read multiple Ryan Holiday
books and I think he always has does a great
job of like relating everyday struggles back to like how
philosophers would handle that, you know, and how to stick
to your your moral code. And so this one, it's
actually recently written. It's very relevant to the world that
we live in today, and I'm enjoying it. So if
you're looking for like a how to guide for twenty
twenty one and what comes into future, courage is calling
Fortune Favors the Brave by Ryan Holiday, say.
Speaker 3: How two for twenty twenty one? But you know how
to have done it already one. Well, there's like two
weeks left when this episode comes up.
Speaker 2: Well, it could be a busy two weeks, it could be,
all right, Danielle, how about you. You got anything to
pick for us?
Speaker 1: I'm good.
Speaker 4: I'm waiting for some form arresting in the Crease Mass
Holidays because I need that nice yes, yes, all right?
Speaker 2: Cool. Well I think that's going to wrap up our episode. Danielle,
thank you so much. This has been a really fun episode.
It's been a really cool topic. I've enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Thank you really for this chat.
Speaker 4: It was very very interesting and sorry for the technical
problems with connection, but at the end, I'm very happy that.
Speaker 1: We find a solution, this adventure develops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's what we do. Still solutions, right, sure.
Speaker 1: It is what we do exactly. Okay, thank you, bye
bye